Lai, Jason – The music man

Jason Lai (b1974)

UNLIKE Mozart, Jason Lai was not composing and playing piano when he was still in rompers.

He was 11 before he began to take music lessons.

Yet over the following years he has proved his capability of becoming one of Britain’s – if not the world’s – leading conductors.

Although his mother occasionally sang some Chinese opera, no one else in the family is a musician.

Jason went to Little Gonerby Infants School, National Junior School and King’s School, where he took up first the piano and then the cello.

He joined the Saturday Grantham Music School and from the start he loved Bach. When he took up the cello he was fascinated by cellists Jacqueline Dupre and Yo Yo Ma.

He continued his studies of the cello, piano and composition with the help of a scholarship at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester.

In 1993 Jason was awarded a Hadow Scholarship to study at Worcester College, Oxford, where he became music director of the Oxford University Philharmonia. From 1998-2000, he was conducting Fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Jason was also a prize winner at the Leeds Conducting Competition in 2005.

He has participated in many conducting masterclasses including those given by Jiri Belohlavek, Sir Andrew Davis and Sir Colin Davis. He has conducted the Guildhall Symphony and Chamber orchestras and New Music Group and made his operatic debut in conducting ŽFaur’s Penelope with Guildhall School Opera.

When he travelled by rail from Grantham to the Guildhall School, he learned there was a price to pay for his art. British Rail insisted that he pay full adult fare for his cello if he took it on the train. He refused to leave it, so spent his rail journeys stood in the luggage area with his beloved instrument.

He came to the public’s notice In February 2002 when he won the televised BBC Young Conductors Workshop and became Assistant Conductor at the BBC Philharmonic.

Jason has also worked with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, English Touring Opera, London Sinfonietta and the BBC Singers.

Jason has been working closely with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta as their Artist Associate developing concerts and programmes. His ability to both conduct and present concerts and involve audiences has been widely praised.

He is the newly appointed Artist Associate with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta.

His passion is seeking new and exciting ways to bring audiences closer to the music.

He was appointed Principal Conductor of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra, Singapore, where he has worked tirelessly to train the musicians of the future and has successfully built up the orchestra to great critical acclaim.

As a broadcaster Jason has appeared on the panel of BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and was a judge for the BBC2 classical talent show Classical Star. He was one of the conducting mentors in the BBC2 series Maestro and won the competition with his celebrity student comedienne Sue Perkins. Other TV appearances include Clash for CBBC, How a Choir Works BBC4 and The Culture Show for BBC2.